


Heat

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Bacta is basically a body lotion I guess, Bruises, Dom/sub Undertones, Fist Fights, Light Temperature Play, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Tension, Sub Thrawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26133088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: After a planet-side mission gets slightly more violent than expected, Pellaeon tends to the Grand Admiral's wounds.
Relationships: Gilad Pellaeon/Thrawn | Mitth’raw’nuruodo
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	Heat

Pellaeon did his best to hide a wince as the footage played. Around him, the other officers on the bridge were less successful; he heard a round of pained hisses and gasps as the planet-side video feed showed Grand Admiral Thrawn taking blasterfire right to the chest.

Of course, he was wearing body armor underneath his uniform. No harm, no foul. But it was still difficult to watch; Pellaeon hid his mouth behind a closed fist, attempting to look more thoughtful than concerned. The video feed was live, and everything was going according to Thrawn’s plan — as much as he’d seen fit to share with them before he took his contingent of guards and shuttled down — but that didn’t make it any easier for Pellaeon to stomach. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in the unique position of watching a superior officer go planet-side on a dangerous mission before; typically, they sent their inferiors out instead.

On the video feed, the stormtroopers and the pirates dissolved into combat, blasters raging. In the center of it all, the camera followed Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Rebel leader — who was too valuable to be killed, according to Thrawn.

The Rebel pulled his blaster. So close to Thrawn, it was quite possible the plasma discharge could break through his body armor and cause serious damage, but none of them ever got the chance to find out; before the Rebel could fire, Thrawn had grabbed his wrist and disarmed him, sending the blaster flying into the grass nearby.

With his weapon gone, the Rebel leader — young, athletic, and taller than Thrawn by at least five inches — launched himself at the Grand Admiral instead.

“Oh, no,” whispered an ensign farther down the bridge. “He’s done for.”

“I assure you, the Grand Admiral has more than enough combat experience to deal with a _street_ _fight_ ,” said Pellaeon gruffly — but privately, he was a bit concerned, too. How many kilos did the Rebel have on Thrawn? Both men were muscular enough to put up a good fight, but that five-inch difference in height put Thrawn at a more severe disadvantage than any of the ensigns knew.

He watched the scuffle intently, cataloguing each punch, each dodge, each kick — the ones that landed, the ones that didn’t. For a moment, it looked like Thrawn was winning — the blows struck to him were only _glancing_ blows, after all, and didn’t appear to faze him — but then he seemed to miscalculate, striking out at the Rebel leader during an obvious feint, and in the next moment the Rebel had his arms wrapped around Thrawn’s waist and was driving him to the ground.

The impact was audible, even over the video feed. Pellaeon bit down hard on his knuckles, hoping the bridge crew wouldn’t notice, that he looked casual and confident still. His eyes darted past Thrawn’s supine figure to the stormtroopers, so immersed in their own battle that they didn’t even notice their commander was down. 

The Rebel bent down over Thrawn’s body, his hands positioned to break the admiral’s neck. Thrawn, for all intents and purposes, was unconscious. He didn’t open his eyes as the Rebel leaned over him, prepared to kill the Grand Admiral—

And then, right as the Rebel came within reach, Thrawn launched himself off the ground. The movement was too fast — and the footage too grainy — for Pellaeon to follow what happened entirely. The next thing he knew, the Rebel was floundering on the ground with the Grand Admiral’s thighs clamped tightly around his neck, slowly choking him out. Thrawn’s muscles tensed beneath his uniform, the fabric straining as he squeezed the Rebel’s breath out of his lungs.

By the time the stormtroopers finished with the pirates, the Rebel leader was unconscious and Thrawn was adjusting his uniform as if nothing had happened. Pellaeon glanced around the bridge, trying not to look utterly deflated with relief. He saw expressions of chagrin and embarrassment reflected back at him in every officer’s face.

So they’d _all_ been worried for a moment there. It wasn’t just him. That was comforting, he supposed. 

The rest of the mission went smoothly from there. Thrawn and his troopers returned to the _Chimaera_ within the next two hours with their prisoners in tow, and by the time the third hour passed, they were all headed into hyperspace. The Rebel leader was safely secured in the _Chimaera’s_ brig, and there was nothing left for Pellaeon to attend to on the bridge.

He looked at Thrawn, still dressed in his grass-stained and blaster-damaged uniform, his hair mussed from the fight hours ago. Thrawn met his gaze, saw something there worth questioning, and raised an eyebrow.

“Join me in my command room, Captain, if you please,” he said, and turned on his heel.

Oh, great. Pellaeon glanced around the bridge, making sure that everything was running smoothly before he left. It didn’t take long to catch up to Thrawn; he was walking stiffly, as if the fight (and the subsequent hour or so of standing on the bridge) had taken more out of him than he let on. 

Thrawn scanned his code cylinder at the door of the command room and waved Pellaeon in. The lights were off, so Pellaeon stopped only a meter or so from the door and waited for his eyes to adjust.

“Lights: sixty percent,” said Thrawn from behind him. The door to the command room hissed shut a moment later and Thrawn stepped past Pellaeon as the lights flickered to life. With a businesslike manner, Thrawn marched straight past the replica command chair in the center of the room and approached a door on the far side; Pellaeon hesitated to follow. He knew, intellectually, that behind that door was Thrawn’s quarters — whatever that may look like — and an Imperial sense of decorum warned him not to enter. But it was clear from his body language that Thrawn intended for him to follow, so after a moment, he did.

Thrawn’s quarters, Pellaeon thought, were almost disappointingly normal. A narrow bunk was built into the wall, with an uncomfortably thin foam mattress atop it covered in Imperial-issue sheets. The only blanket was a coarse-looking field blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed, Academy-style. It didn’t look like the bed had been slept in recently.

Other than that, there was only a cheap desk outfitted with a communication board and holoprojector, a few storage cabinets and a closet built into the bulkheads, and a door leading to a small refresher. Pellaeon glanced around, expecting to at least find some art hung on the walls, but there was nothing.

“You don’t have any personal effects, sir?” he asked, turning back to Thrawn. The question died in his throat, his mouth snapping shut. In the center of the room, Thrawn was removing his tunic with the same businesslike manner he’d used to lead Pellaeon here, undoing the buttons economically and revealing the form-fitting body armor he wore underneath.

He glanced up, meeting Pellaeon’s eyes with a look of guileless curiosity even as he undressed.

“Personal effects?” he said. “Such as what?”

Pellaeon’s mouth was dry. He eyed Thrawn’s collarbones, visible above the chest plate he wore, and then Thrawn shrugged out of his tunic and bared his biceps for Pellaeon to stare at instead. When no answer came, Thrawn folded his tunic over the nearby chair, and said,

“Do _you_ have personal effects in your quarters?”

“Ah…” Pellaeon blinked, his eyes shifting over the dark bruises painted across Thrawn’s torso. “Ah, I do, yes — sir, have you been to the medbay?”

Thrawn paused in the middle of undoing the clasp on his chest plate. He looked up at Pellaeon, frowning. “No, Captain, I haven’t.” He glanced down at himself as the chest plate came loose, almost like he was checking beneath the body armor for wounds he hadn’t noticed before. “Should I have?” he asked.

“You’re injured,” said Pellaeon, gesturing lamely at Thrawn’s torso. Thrawn raised one eyebrow and then craned his neck, trying to look over his shoulder at his back.

“Where?” he asked.

“Those bruises, sir,” said Pellaeon, losing patience. “The medbay has plenty of bacta. You could get rid of those in no time.”

Thrawn made a soft sound almost like a scoff and turned away, stripping the rest of his body armor off. “I can do that just as easily here,” he said. “I have my own medkit. There’s no reason to take up space in the medbay.”

There was no reason _not_ to, either — it wasn’t like they had an influx of patients there today — but Pellaeon held his tongue. Instead, he gestured again to Thrawn’s bruises and said, “What about your back?”

Thrawn leaned against his desk, shirtless, and stared at Pellaeon with his head cocked.

“You can’t reach your own back,” Pellaeon explained. Then, when Thrawn only kept staring at him, “Can you?”

A faint smile touched Thrawn’s lips. “No, Captain. I’m not a contortionist.”

Pellaeon accepted that with a quick nod, his cheeks flushed at the mental image that rose with it. He avoided Thrawn’s eyes; with nothing else to do, and with the silence weighing heavily on him, he crossed to the refresher and grabbed the medkit from a wire shelf on the wall. 

When he brought it back, he did his best not to even glance at Thrawn’s bare chest. He placed the kit on the desk, his elbow brushing Thrawn’s, and checked inside.

“You’ll get my back for me?” Thrawn asked, his fingers ghosting against Pellaeon’s arm. 

Pellaeon froze. He stared at the tube of bacta in his hand, his mind stuttering. When he finally answered, he was surprised by how steady he sounded. “Certainly, sir. I can do that.”

After all, he told himself, there was nothing particularly unusual about that. He’d helped out plenty of colleagues with minor wounds before. This particular instance was only unusual in that Thrawn was his superior, and he’d never tended to the wounds of a superior before. He uncapped the tube of bacta and straightened up, finally meeting Thrawn’s eyes.

He pretended not to notice the touch of amusement still dancing around Thrawn’s lips. With the tube of bacta in his hand, he gestured toward Thrawn’s narrow bunk.

“Sit,” he said.

Something in Thrawn’s eyes seemed to sparkle at that. He obeyed quickly and silently, lowering himself with grace onto the low bunk. He watched Pellaeon cross the room to join him, and when Pellaeon chose a spot not far from Thrawn to sit down, Thrawn turned at the waist to present his back to him. 

Pellaeon squeezed a small portion of cold, gel-like bacta into his palm and then hesitated with his hand above Thrawn’s shoulder blades, grimacing. “This might sting,” he warned.

“I trust you,” Thrawn replied.

Well, that wasn’t the response Pellaeon expected. He blinked, cheeks burning, and then forced himself to continue. Gingerly, he placed his palm flat against Thrawn’s back; he expected Thrawn to flinch from the cool temperature of the gel, but instead, _he_ was the one flinching. Thrawn’s skin was even colder than the bacta. Pellaeon’s hand flexed; he instinctively wanted to pull away, but forced himself not to, and just as he was about to rub the bacta in, he heard a low, almost inaudible hum from Thrawn.

“What is it?” Pellaeon asked, his hand flat against Thrawn’s largest bruise. It was a moment before Thrawn spoke, and when he did, his voice sounded strangely rusty.

“You’re warm,” he said.

“Well, you’re cold,” Pellaeon shot back. When there was no response, he started to regret his tone. “Is it a problem?” he asked, more gently. 

“No,” said Thrawn. He leaned back a little on his hands, pressing himself closer to Pellaeon. “Don’t stop.”

Hell, did he really need to say it like _that_? Pellaeon’s cheeks were so flushed now that he thought he might start sweating. He spread the bacta slowly over the bruises on Thrawn’s back, careful not to rub hard enough to cause pain. He could feel Thrawn’s muscles tensing beneath his hands; as he loaded more bacta on his hands and spread it around, he reached the crook of Thrawn’s neck and felt a massive knot beneath his fingers.

He ignored it for now, moving on to the bruises farther down. They dotted Thrawn’s spine, with one particularly large dark spot over his left kidney. It had to be tender there, but Thrawn didn’t flinch when Pellaeon spread bacta over it; instead, he leaned even harder into Pellaeon’s touch. 

“Does this feel okay?” Pellaeon asked him a bit doubtfully.

“Mm,” said Thrawn, which Pellaeon supposed was a yes. He glanced over Thrawn’s shoulder and saw the Grand Admiral’s eyes had slid closed; his head was bowed, as if he might fall asleep any moment, but Pellaeon had no doubt he was awake. He put his hands on Thrawn’s shoulders, holding him upright, and rubbed his thumbs against Thrawn’s cool skin.

“Sir?” he asked.

Thrawn cracked open his eyes. “You’re finished?”

“Ah…” Pellaeon looked down at his hands, at his skin against Thrawn’s skin, and reluctantly pulled away. “Yes. I’m done.”

For a moment, Thrawn only sat there, his face unreadable. Then he twisted around in bed, pulling his legs up onto the thin mattress, and faced Pellaeon. He grabbed Pellaeon by the wrist and guided his hand until his palm was flat against Thrawn’s forehead.

“Do I feel ill to you?” asked Thrawn innocently.

Pellaeon tried not to smile. “You feel cold, sir.”

“Colder than usual?” Thrawn asked, as if Pellaeon had any idea what was _usual_ for him. His eyes were hooded and trained with intense focus on Pellaeon’s face. Pellaeon sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, but he didn’t move his hand away from Thrawn’s head.

“Do you not feel well?” he asked. He brushed his fingers through Thrawn’s hair, rearranging it until it looked more or less civilized. Part of him couldn’t believe Thrawn was letting him do it; the other, larger part of him couldn’t believe he was letting _himself_ do it.

Thrawn didn’t answer. He only stared at Pellaeon, silently signaling his captain with his eyes, urging him to do or say something specific — only Pellaeon couldn’t quite figure out what. He studied Thrawn’s face for a long moment, unsure what he was supposed to be interpreting from the other man’s unreadable features.

Thrawn had called him in here for a reason. At first, Pellaeon had assumed it was for a debrief on their latest mission — he’d even convinced himself of it straight through the first few stages of applying bacta to Thrawn’s back, but he could no longer hold onto that mistruth. So what _had_ Thrawn called him in here for?

He remembered the glint in Thrawn’s eyes when Pellaeon told him to sit — and how quickly, how eagerly he’d obeyed. Pellaeon made up his mind fast; he put his hands on Thrawn’s shoulders and pushed him, gently but firmly guiding him back against the mattress.

“Lay down,” he said, and Thrawn went willingly, lying supine on the bed beneath Pellaeon. His legs were bent awkwardly between them, but Thrawn made no attempt to move them; his ankle found Pellaeon’s thigh, the soft skin there rubbing against his uniform so slyly Pellaeon almost couldn’t be sure it was on purpose. 

Leaning forward, Pellaeon put his hands on the mattress on either side of Thrawn’s narrow waist. He scanned Thrawn’s body, particularly the bruises he’d missed on Thrawn’s chest, on his ribs, on the skin above his waistband, his hips … and then he tracked lower, to the white trousers of Thrawn’s uniform, stained with grass and dirt and—

“Is this blood?” Pellaeon asked, fingering a red dot on Thrawn’s knee. Thrawn raised his head to look at it. 

“Yes. Not mine.”

Huh. Pellaeon had missed that part of the video feed. He pinched the fabric between his fingers; he could feel Thrawn staring at him, but he took his time examining the cloth. In the end, he wrapped his fingers in the fabric of Thrawn’s trousers and yanked on it, pulling Thrawn’s legs farther apart in the process.

“You should take these off,” he said steadily, meeting Thrawn’s eyes. “You don’t mean to sleep in them, do you?”

Thrawn’s lips twitched. He reached down slowly, his knuckles brushing Pellaeon’s chest, and undid the buckle on his belt. He reached down past the belt, then, taking his zipper down one centimeter at a time. When he was done, he lifted his hands above his head, grasping the edge of the bunk, and stared at Pellaeon placidly, prompting him to take charge.

Quickly, Pellaeon slid Thrawn’s belt out of its loops and tossed it aside. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of Thrawn’s trousers, tugging them down past Thrawn’s hips. Immediately, he pulled back, a smile tracing his lips, and reached behind him. As soon as he took his hands off Thrawn’s hips, Thrawn opened his eyes and craned his neck again.

“What is it?” he asked, almost accusingly. 

Pellaeon reached out blindly, feeling his way across the bed behind him until he found the tube of bacta. “You landed on your left side when he flipped you,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

Frowning, Thrawn looked down at his left hip, which had turned almost entirely purple from trauma. He let his head fall back against the mattress and watched as Pellaeon spread bacta over the bruise with something almost like a pout crossing his face. Pellaeon spread a thin layer over the wound, rubbing the bacta into Thrawn’s skin thoroughly, pretending not to notice the minute twitches as Thrawn responded to his touch. 

He pulled his hand away, aiming the tube of bacta at his palm again. Thrawn sat up on his elbows with another frown.

“Don’t get impatient,” said Pellaeon. He waited until Thrawn had settled down again before rubbing the bacta into his skin. With his thumb, he explored just a little outside of polite bounds, slipping under the waistband of Thrawn’s underwear. This time, when Thrawn shifted beneath him, there was no disguising his intent; he spread his legs and angled his hips up closer to Pellaeon, seeking his touch. Seeking heat.

Pellaeon couldn’t help but smile. He leaned down close to Thrawn, until the lapels of his tunic were touching Thrawn’s bare chest, the coarse fabric dragging against his nipples. When his lips were mere centimeters from Thrawn’s — when Thrawn’s hooded eyes were looking into his own — he whispered, “What do you want from me?”

Thrawn’s eyes glinted. He shifted beneath Pellaeon, his thighs — the same thighs that had choked a Rebel leader to unconsciousness just hours before — coming to rest against Pellaeon’s hips.

“Take charge,” he said. “I want to see what you can do.”

He had more to say after that — when _didn’t_ he have more to say? — but before he could get another word out, Pellaeon closed the distance between them. Thrawn’s lips were cold against his own; his mouth came open beneath Pellaeon’s in a sharp gasp of surprise — not at the kiss itself, Pellaeon guessed, but at the heat coming off Pellaeon’s skin. 

He felt Thrawn’s tongue against his, exploring his mouth in a peculiar, respectful way, like he was waiting for Pellaeon to set the pace or tell him what to do. The difference in temperature was strange — addicting — like nothing Pellaeon had ever experienced with another human. 

“Hands above your head,” he said as he pulled away, burying his face in the crook of Thrawn’s neck. His lips pressed against Thrawn's pulse point. He felt the other man’s cold hands move away from his chest, up the length of the bed until they grasped the edge of it again. “Hold still,” Pellaeon said.

He sat up, unbuckling his belt and casting it aside. Thrawn’s eyes sharpened, his lips swollen, his hair in disarray as he watched.

“You’re still cold?” Pellaeon asked him. He kept his tone professional, polite. Beneath him, Thrawn seemed to recalibrate, thinking over Pellaeon’s words carefully before he nodded. By the time he did, Pellaeon’s trousers were already undone and he’d rested one hand on Thrawn’s stomach, just above the waistband of his underwear.

“Then let me warm you up,” Pellaeon said. 


End file.
